C3 - Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions

Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions
By Mickey Chuang at Jun. 20, 2007

"CHANGE", it happens in our daily life no matter you like it or not.
"Everything is changing." we heard it very often, but we usually don't like changes.
What should we do about it when facing these changes and how to do better? It's quite a big question.

The Book
There's a book I want to introduce entitled "Our Iceberg Is Melting" (2005) composed by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber. I read it recently and I found it could bring us some ideas to deal with changes.

It is written as fable, not a 300 pages' book and easy to read. It uses a story of the penguins to highlight the points. In this book, one of the penguins named Fred observes that the iceberg that his colony is living on is melting. He must use a vast array of tools to convince the others that the iceberg is melting and that new options need to be explored. Knowing that he will need the support of everyone in the community, he tries to tell one of the penguins and then pulls together the team in which each with different problem solving skills. They work together to make changes.

All of the characters in the book, Fred, Ann, Nono, Louis, Jordan, are all based on real life characters. Many of them you will quickly recognize from your workplace and day-to-day life. The book shows how the penguins did and stepped outside the box.

There're 8 principles of problem solving the author infuses in this story.
The eight step process of successful change:
Set the Stage
1. Create a sense of urgency. Help others see the need for change and the importance of acting immediately.
2. Pull Together the Guiding Team. Make sure there is a powerful group guiding the change—one with leadership skills, credibility, communication ability, authority, analytical skills, and a sense of urgency.

Decide What to Do
3. Develop the Change Vision and Strategy. Clarify how the future will be different from the past, and how you can make that future a reality.

Make it Happen
4. Communicate for Understanding and Buy In. Make sure as many others as possible understand and accept the vision and the strategy.
5. Empower Others to Act Remove as many barriers as possible so that those who want to make the vision a reality can do so.
6. Produce Short-term Wins. Create some visible, unambiguous successes as soon as possible.
7. Don't Let Up. Press harder and faster after the first successes. Be relentless with initiating change after change until the vision is a reality.

Make it Stick
8. Create a New Culture. Hold on to the new ways of behaving, and make sure they succeed, until they become strong enough to replace old traditions.

Enjoy The Book and also The Changing World.
The book is very short, and takes only a couple hours to read, you will feel energized after reading the book and ready to make some changes in your life and the way that you communicate with others.

I think it also can be applied to our club, the Toastmasters Club. For example, like we're new elected officers, we found some problems about making our club to run better and the 8 steps could be the good way to make a change. You may also found something, in our club and you can also join the team no matter you're the officers or not, because the club is like our iceberg.

Hope you enjoy the book and also the changing world.